


The Heart Place

by kathiann



Category: The Mentalist
Genre: Depression, Drama, F/M, Gen, Regret, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-13
Updated: 2013-10-13
Packaged: 2017-12-29 06:30:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1002084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathiann/pseuds/kathiann
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane reflects back on his past. Warning: Containts mentions of suicide, depression, and self harm. Ye be warned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Heart Place

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the mentalist_bb reverse bang. I had the pleasure of working with casper_san on this.

_It's my fault that she's here. That she's laying hooked to machines with wires and tubes coming out of places no wire or tube was meant to be. Her normal pale skin was ashen and her cheeks, usually so lively and flush were sunken and dead. Had I listened. Had I done what she suggested we wouldn't be here. But, had I done that Red John would still be alive. He would still be out there terrorizing the state of California. And now he is dead, and she might be too. I've lost so many people in my life. I don't think I can lose any one else. The doctors say that there isn't much more the can do for her. That it's up to her body and her mind if she comes back or not. If she lives or not. Talk to her they say. So I sit here by her side, holding her hand, the only part of her body that doesn't seem to be covered in medical tape and I talk. I tell her how I ended up sitting here. And I pray, though I still cannot say I believe in God, that she will wake up._

I always assumed that thinking about death and taking one’s own life was just something people did. After all, it was something I had done since I was a kid sitting at the top of the Ferris Wheel. I would look out over the empty stalls and gravel paths that in just a few short hours would be crowded with people eager to waist their hard earned money on the chance of a stuffed bear by pooping balloons of the cheap thrill of a short ride on the tilt a whirl. I would think about how easy it would be to slip out of the safety harness and just fall to the earth below. I would wonder if it would hurt, it the fall was far enough to kill me or I would just be seriously hurt. Once I remember watching one of the elephants who had gotten some sort of nail or thorn stuck in her foot. She was stomping and thrashing and all of the handlers were afraid to go near her. I remember thinking about what it would be like to be there, under her feet while she was stomping uncontrollably. I could almost imagine the weight of the foot banging down on my head. When I learned to drive, I remember thinking about what it would be like to drive into oncoming traffic. I never acted on the impulses, but I would drive down steep hills with sharp drops and wonder what it would be like to just veer off the road and fly through the sky. The inevitable crash was just an afterthought at those moments.

 

In high school health class, because contrary to popular belief I did actually go to school, we learned the signs and symptoms of depression. I'm not sure why, it wasn't part of the regular curriculum. This was still the age where those with mental illness were stigmatized and locked up in institutions. Mrs. Rogers, in her pencil skirts and ratty sweaters, paced out lists of warning signs. Things that would pinpoint depression in a friend or even in ourselves. And there, at the bottom of the list in bold no less, was thinking about suicide. That's when I found out that thinking about death wasn't normal and I was glad that I had never told anyone about my fantasies.

 

When I started dating Angela my dreams turned from violent means of escaping the life I loathed to a more romantic means of escape. We left the carnival together when I was eighteen, right after our graduation from the high school that specialized in migrant farm workers and carnival folk. The ceremony was laughable and the “graduates” were for the most part just pushed through with the knowledge that most of the kids would follow in their parent’s footsteps into the fields or carnival. Very little real leaning had taken place in most of the classes. Except that health class freshman year. We left that night, leaving behind our friends and family, hoping for a better life.

 

Angela got a job in a music store. She'd always had an interest in music and it just seemed to be a good fit. She taught herself to play the piano on the old upright the owner kept in the back and picked up guitar and violin by watching the classes offered by the owner after school. It didn't take long before she was filling in as the instructor herself.

 

For my part, I floundered a bit after we left. I had only one real skill and I wasn’t sure how to go about marketing it. I started going door to door to the various psychics and spirit mediums in the area. The local palm and tarot card reader saw me knocking on their doors. Most, if not all, of them knew me, or at the least were familiar with my work. A few were even willing to give me a chance of working at their shops once or twice, though it never lasted long.

 

My big break was with Madam Eldora, Gypsy Mystic from Romania, who really haled from Ohio. Over tea one afternoon in the back room of her shop she turned to me and said in her gravelly voice, competently devoid of the European accent she put on for show, “Patrick, you need a new gimmick. You're too old to pull off the psychic boy any longer. No one buys it. And there are too many people out there who tell the future, myself included. You pull off talking to the spirits really well. The thought of death surrounds you. Have you ever thought of specializing? Talking to the dead full time?”

 

The idea was intriguing. Death was something that still surrounded me. Though I was happy with Angela, though I knew I would never take my own life, I couldn't seem to keep the thoughts at bay. In the kitchen at night shopping carrots for dinner I would think about taking the knife and sliding it up my wrists. I would wonder what the blood would look like pouring out of my wrists. It didn't take long for me to latch on to the idea of talking to the dead; my new gimmick was born. At first, I worked the opposite shift of Madam Eldora, not wanting to interfere with her clients who liked the crystal ball method of fortune telling. But soon I had enough regular clients that I was able to open my own shop. It was nothing fancy, and barely on the good side of town, but I saved every penny I got and with Angela’s wages from the music shop we were able to move into a nicer place and soon on to a better shop in a classier part of town.

 

If I still thought about what it would be like to purposely hydroplane in the car on streets slick with rain I didn't tell anyone. And, if on occasion, I thought about pulling Angela’s curling iron into the bath with me I just brushed it off. I was happy. I had to be. Things were going right. Things were moving along. And life was beautiful.

 

We got married the next spring, winter still really, when the carnival was down for the season. My dad wasn't there, I didn't know where he was and I didn't care. Or that's what I told people, but it still stung a bit. I had wanted him to be proud of me, to be proud of what I had done. As much as I wanted out of the carnival life, as much as I had hated bilking people out of the money when I was younger, it was still his training that had got me where I was.

 

We settled into a simple life, a simple routine. We both worked during the day, my clients tended to be the type who had large amounts of time at their disposal, stay-at-home moms and recent widows. Both types were usually bored enough to come back multiple times. A widow would come to “talk” with her late husband. A mother to “commune” with her best friend who died in high school. It was cake. Tell them that their friend forgives them for dating her boyfriend, that her husband wishes he could still be there but knew she would be just fine.

 

However, I can't lie, there were times, late at night when I was alone, when my old dreams would rear their ugly heads. And much as I tried to push them away, they were like an evil temptress that I was powerless against. In the back room of my office one night, I was gathering my daily take when the bell over the door dinged. For a moment, I had a heart wrenching feeling as I realized I had not locked the door. In that brief moment I imagined what would happen if someone unsavory were in the front. A man with a gun coming to get whatever money I might have on me. I could hear the gun shot and almost felt the bullet piercing my chest. And I felt calm. I was ready to except my fate. But that didn't happen.

 

I walked through the curtain separating my office from the main area of the shop and there stood a woman, tall and thins and very beautiful. Her eyes were red rimmed as though she had been crying. She had a diamond ring on her finger the size of which I'd only ever seen on TV. Her nails had what at one point was probably a very expensive manicure that was now chipped and broken I surmised that she had probably been picking at them and biting them. But above all, she was someone that I knew, but I couldn't place her. I greeted her in my usual way, ever the showman. I did not yet know why she was there, but I knew that she was going to be important. It didn't take long for her story to come out.

 

“My best girlfriend’s cousin came to see you,” she told me, her voice hitching slightly as she spoke. “I don't normally do this kind of thing.” She was very unsure, but very distraught, even though she seemed to be holding herself together. “My friend said her cousin came to see you after her mother died. She said that you talked to her mother. I need you to do that for me.”

 

I knew at once that her mother wasn't dead. A woman such as this wasn't one to get publicly upset at the death of her mother. But in the few seconds that she had been talking I figured out here I'd seen her. She'd been on TV. A young mother who h been championing for a cure for a rather rare and nasty form of pediatric liver cancer. Her son, an only child, had it. But he had been pale and thin and frail looking. I knew he hadn't made it.

 

“You're not here about your mother.” I said, in my calm, relaxing voice that I used when people were testing me, to see if I was “real” or not. “You are here to seek contact with someone closer to you, someone who was a part of you.” I placed my hand on hers and closed my eyes as though communing through her. “Your son. He was so young, such a tragic death.”

 

And with that, I had her. She saw me that night, and the night after that. I felt a little bad, taking the money of a grieving mother, but she paid so well and was instant on it. And in a way, I was providing a service. I was helping her through her grief. I was making her feel better. I was giving her something that a counselor would never be able to. I was giving her hope. Even if it was false hope, I was giving that to her. And, in a twisted way, I thought that made up for all the times I had deliberately lied and misled people when it didn't turn out all right for them.

 

My patron, and I truly thought of her as such, came to see me frequently. And she brought friends. Those who also wouldn't normally do this sort of thing, but who came nonetheless. Came to see if it was true, came to see if I could indeed connect them with friends and family lost to the eternity of death. My clientele changed in such a way that I was able to move locations, get a new house, and start charging more per session. Angela wasn't sure about my newfound popularity with the up and coming well to do crowd, but we had Charlotte and she didn't say no to being able to stay home with her and living in a better neighborhood.

 

I've not mentioned Angela much, or Charlotte. I have my reasons. You already know so much about them. You already know how that story ends. I spent so much of my time in the years after Charlotte was born being an absent father. Oh, I was there when I needed to be, I smiled in all the photos, but I wasn't present. I moved my office to the house that we bought in Malibu and worked quite frequently. I would go off at a moments notice if the client were paying me enough. At first, Angela was OK with it. She understood the need for me to build a client base so that we could live comfortably, something neither of us could say about our childhoods. But soon it began to wear on her.

 

I' sure you know about the money I made in my line of work. We weren't hurting financially by any means. Angela wanted me to quite, or at least scale back. We actually had one of our infrequent fights about that. The night I was to go on that stupid TV show and speak about Red John. I know you know all of this; we've talked about it before. She didn't want me to go. I felt that this appearance could cement me into police work, a calmer quieter type of work that would mean that I could stop seeing as many clients.

 

But we all know how that worked out.

 

From the time that tall blond walked into my storefront to the time I opened that door with the eloquently penned note from Red John I was somehow able to keep thoughts of death and self-harm from entering my head. Oh on occasion I could feel the thoughts bubbling up from somewhere dark within me, but for the most part, I was able to keep them at bay. But after that night they came flooding back. Worse than before, having been pushed to the side for almost a decade. They wanted to be heard and they would be heard. And for the first time I was powerless against them.

 

I ended up in that hospital when I took my expensive luxury car for a joy ride of the side of a cliff. Or I thought it was a cliff. I ended up totally the car and I didn't fly. How sad is it that not flying was the disappointment in that event. I was still alive, I still didn’t have my family, the one thing that was truly worth living for, and I didn't fly. I didn't tell the people in the hospital about my dreams, about my thoughts, about how I'd had them my whole life. I knew they would lock me up and throw away the key. And I couldn't have that.

 

In that place, surrounded by sterile white and overly calm and relaxing mental health professionals, I plotted my escape. No, not my escape from the hospital. That I knew would come in time. I plotted my escape for life. I blamed Red John for my pain and misery, though I think I knew deep down that it wasn't him but me that was fatally flawed.

 

And you know that story as well. My first day as a broken man at the CBI, only some of that was an act. I was broken. In a way I still am. Those thoughts and dreams haven't gone away, not once since I left that hospital. They fade into the background on occasion, but they never truly go away. And I've thought I was alone in that. I thought that I alone held the monopoly in pain and misery.

 

But then you didn't listen. And Red John tried to kill you. And you tried to kill Red John. Well, he is dead. And while you were in surgery I went to your apartment to find your address book because Red John had destroyed your phone. I knew you would have one. I knew that you would have a backup that wasn't your phone or some online address storage. You're just that type. Sure, there are numbers in your official file for your brothers, or at least one of them, but I knew that your niece's number wouldn’t be there, and I knew that she deserved a phone call as much as your brothers did.

 

I was looking, not caring what I saw, when I found a small moleskin book tucked behind a collection of supernatural mystery novels. It looked well worn; the corners were bent and turned up in places. And I was drawn to it. I knew at once that it was private, that I shouldn't look, but I couldn't help it. And what I found made me realize that you had felt alone too.

 

In the pages of a diary that has been kept since you were a teen I found a mate. A partner in grief and pain. All those years feeling I was alone, even when I was with Angela, and you were there, feeling the same thing. And I never knew. I couldn't see it in you. Because you put on that face, and you look so brave. And you just keep going, no matter what. But you are always in harm’s way. You go after suspects twice your size; you face down the most notorious serial killer in the state alone. And you don't blink. And now I'm going to lose you.

 

_I watched her. I watched her breath. The rhythmic rise and fall of her chest, wishing it was her own lungs moving and not the machine next to her bed. Nurses came and went doctors poked their heads in. Her brothers came and mourned. And I sat there, clutching a small notebook in my hand, hoping and wishing she would wake so that I could tell her she wasn't alone. Unsure and unwilling to give in to the thoughts swirling in the back of my head, Thoughts not unfamiliar of death and pain. Knowing that this time I would not be able to go on if she was not here and not knowing how it was going to end._


End file.
